The Lumia 900 is considered to be Microsoft's best shot to stop the Apple juggernaut. Does it have what it takes?
Hey, did you hear? Microsoft makes an operating system for smartphones!
If you didn't know, don't feel bad, you're hardly alone. With a market share in the single digits, it seems Microsoft's brand awareness for its smartphone OS is down there with Linux on the desktop.
In this case, you could say the failure is for lack of trying. I've seen TV ads for Internet Explorer, a free product, but nothing yet for Windows Phone. And as our recent feature on Windows Phone and BlackBerry illustrated, the phone has appeal if you can get it in front of people.
Microsoft certainly has the reach. All four major wireless carriers have the Windows Phone, and OEMs include Samsung, HTC and Nokia. That's a lot of reach.
It's Nokia's Lumia 900 that's widely viewed as Microsoft's last best chance, and it's a pretty good chance. The Lumia 900 was voted Best of Comdex 2012 by a number of publications, including CNet, and has earned raves.
Then again, so did the Palm Pre three years ago.
However, Palm was a broke and broken company with minimal support. The Lumia 900 has the world's largest smartphone maker and the world's largest software company behind it. No one can say they won't have the money to flog this thing to the moon.
So, is it all that? Let's take a look and see how it stacks up to the best-selling smartphone in the world.
How's Siri on iPhone 4? Oh what you mean just 1 generation later the main new software feature isnt supported on the Apple platform?
The Nokia Lumia 900 stops with Windows Phone 7.x, and can't be upgraded to the soon-to-be-released Windows Phone 8 (Apollo), which is a rewritten OS.
If you buy a phone, you want it to be valid and up-to-date for a couple of years, and not left behind 3 months after you bought it.
How's Siri on iPhone 4? Oh what you mean just 1 generation later the main new software feature isnt supported on the Apple platform?
We don't know that, although it won't be too surprising. Apollo is a major jump in the OS and might require all new hardware. RIM didn't back BB7 backwards compatible with BB6 phones because it required so much more horsepower.
And besides, most people DON'T upgrade their phone OS. They get the upgrade when they buy a new phone.
-Andy
Strange, did you give it enough time?
Few I can easily list:
a. the integrated people connection function, no matter is facebook, twitter or hotmail account, all in the same place and extremely convenient
b. the integration with XBox live, those easily saved game and user profile and sharing with friends and online gamers.
c. office system, which is truly make windows phone a great business friendly gadget where you can easily read a PowerPoint slide, excel worksheet and word document. If you compare two phones with feature like this, then iPhone got nothing
btw. the screen size! One thing has been hard for me to use iPhone is its 3.5 inch size. It is just too small after you have used any big size ones. I have been a iPhone user for more than one year, but the time I got a 4.0 inch focus, I dumped my 3GS and never looked back. the screen size can make a huge difference IMHO.
Not an unreasonable criticism at all. I had mentioned this but the review was getting long and started removing things for the sake of brevity. The inclusion of Office and SharePoint is a nice feature in the Lumia's favor, as is XBox Live, but all WP7 phones have that, so it's not exclusive.
The phone really feels solid. I have relatively smaller hands and this phone had been easy to use, text, etc. I had no 'power off' issue or anything like that either. The phone is very responsive so far. I would've liked a built in fm transmitter so that I wouldn't have to directly connect my phone to my car outlet but oh well.
This is just the first step of things to come for MS and Nokia
I was concerned when i saw the Apps. Not everyone needs 700 000 apps.
Apps not really that important to a lot of people
I wish someone would give a unbiased review!
Btw, I have used iphones, androids, and windows phones and I can say I like the windows phone the most. I own a Titan and my wife loves her lumia 900. When the app count is there the iphone fanboys will be jumping ship!
Every comparison is what this phone cant do that the IPhone can do. What about all the things WP does that IPhone does not do (or WP7 does better).
Nokia was the largest smartphone manufacturer, until Mr Elop open his mouth and wrote the disastrous "burning platform" memo. As a cellphone manufacturer Nokia has fallen from being 3 times bigger than Apple to be the 3rd largest and shrinking. Sales of the microsoft based Lumia phones has been a disaster (Lumia was released world over, the N9 was only released in small markets and anyway the sales of N9 has been 3 times better than all Lumia models together). In Nokias home market, the sales of Lumia devices is almost zero and in microsofts home market the sale of WP phones are not far from zero, if they can't get their home markets to believe on the product, no one else will. I see Lumia be killing Nokia and as long as the moron is CEO there will be nothing to save Nokia.
@cknobman:
WP has one thing a lot better than iOS, the security that you can't send files over Bluetooth or do anything else than audio. WP allows you friends to turn off your message service with a SMS(slight drawback is when you want to enable it again, you need to hard reset the device and loose everything stored on it). You don't have to worry about memory will be filled up with SMS drafts, as WP will not save such. WP is equal with iOS with number of drivers for hardware, so Nokia had to release PureView with Symbian as microosft wouldn't be able to support the hardware any earlier than 2013. Hope that list is okey for you, can say my old Nokia from early 2000 did manage to transfer files, save SMS drafts...